Saturday, February 20, 2010

February Poll Soup: The New Normal

We've had a fair chunk of polling out this month and the results are fairly consistent - a slim Tory lead, similar to what we saw in January, at the height of the prorogation backlash. The notable exception would be Environics, which had the Grits in front earlier this month.

Of course, every pundit has spent the past year talking about Harper's Olympic bounce. I'm not sure I really see the logic behind it - it's not like Alex Bilodeau is a Tory candidate, and we've seen a lot less of Harper over the past week than we usually do. But maybe that's the point. Perhaps with Canadians ignoring politics, the anger over prorogation will fade.

9 Comments:

Do you think Harper will try and do whatever he can to avoid an election until 2011 ... at which time he can appoint replacements for the two senators retiring at the end of this year and give the Cons a majority in the senate? That way if Harper fails to win a majority on the third try and has to leave he has at least left a mark of some sort.

Anonymous, that "scary" description of the Christian and Missionary Alliance could apply just as easily to the Catholic church. Yet we never see this kind of discussion about Catholic political leaders.

Harper has been very consistent in supporting a focus on economic issues over social issues, going back to when he was a Reform MP. He was one of the few Reformers to support same-sex civil unions, described himself as in-between on the abortion issue (while running to lead the largely pro-life alliance), he made sure to hold his gay marriage vote at a time he knew it would fail, he has promoted almost all of the pro-gay marriage Conservatives within his caucus, and neither of his two supreme court appointments were remotely socially conservative.

Anon 7:03, assuming Laureen did not commit adultery I don't think there would be a problem. Still I should think that most churches frown on divorce, even if they accept it. Christianity is not founded on a belief that marriage is about love between two people, but rather is about family (with kids).